"It’s a lot easier to sell somebody a CD after a show than telling them “Don’t forget to look us up on Bandcamp tomorrow and pay for the digital download!” - Harley Rex, Fallen Love RecordsFallen Love Records, from Canada, stands on two spirits: pop songs and friendship. They do support their roosters, which mostly are their friends who play in indiepop band. Here, Harley Rex told me how his passion in music made him dreaming about having concert venue or record label - which is finally turned into reality in the existence of Fallen Love Records.

Hello Harley, can you tell me a little bit about Fallen Love Records? What and where is it, when did you start this, and what makes you think you have to make a netlabel? Fallen Love Records is an indiepop record label based out of southern Ontario in Canada. I started Fallen Love up in October 2012 and I've been running it with help from friends since then. I love music but I don’t know how to play any instruments so I always dreamed of having my own record label or record shop or venue. Since 2009 I've been putting on concerts in my city and I met a lot of great local bands that had never recorded before or put out any music so finally in 2012 I thought that I should stop dreaming about it and start making this Fallen Love thing a reality.How many people running this label? Right now it’s mostly me with some help from my friend Jake Read. How many releases do you have? So far we’ve put out 8 things: 3 CD’s, 2 cassettes, 2 zines, and a compilation CD of local bands from our area.How is the process of recruiting the bands? They come to you offering their album or you search them and give a contact? Most of the bands on the Fallen Love roster right now are good friends of ours. When I started up the label I went to all my favorite local bands and asked them to be a part of it and they almost all said yes! Then we’ve been keeping an ear out for new bands since then. Blackpony are the only band currently on the roster that aren’t from our area. They’re from Mexico and they found us through Facebook. We liked what we heard so we said we’d be glad to work together with them. We don’t do contracts or anything like that. Everything is just handshakes and taking things one item at a time.You released indiepop stuffs. May I know, why do you prefer this genre? I love almost all genres of music. I have good friends who are in terrific punk bands and there are lots of R&B and hip-hop musicians that I like but the indiepop community has always just been where I feel most at home. The lyrics and visual aesthetics and fashion styles are just me. My favorite record labels have always been the ones with a sort of defined vision, labels that are just punk labels or indiepop or noisy garage rock. I feel like it’s more focused and makes it easier for people to become fans when they can know that everything the label puts out is going to be similar in style and not, like, a folk singer and a dark metal band and a b-boy rapper.I found a statement in your site: ‘Dedicated to friendship and pop songs’. Any certain meaning of this? When we started I was looking for a slogan for the label that summed up what we were trying to do in a quick, short way. Since I love pop music and our first group of artists were all friends of ours, this one seemed perfect.You keep releasing physical release even while you are releasing the digital format too. Do you still believe that physical release is the best music documentation? As a music fan I've always loved physical artifacts. The music is the most important thing, obviously, but I like having something I can hold and look at. I like reading the liner notes and looking at the art and putting them on my shelf for display so that friends can look at them when they come over. mp3’s are useful but I almost never pay for digital downloads. I’ll always look to see if they have a CD I can buy first.Which one of these two types - digital and physical - of releases that get better response from the people around you? Not trying to compare the market, I just want to know the responses. So far we’ve had much more success with physical. For instance, with something like Defne’s EP Gentle Persuasion we’ve sold about 111 cassettes but we’ve only sold maybe 4 or 5 digital downloads? It helps that our cassettes come with free digital download cards too so if they do buy a tape, they get both.In your country, how is the current trend of running a label? Physical ones or digital ones? I don’t know about all of Canada as we’re a pretty big country. I know overall more and more sales are being made through iTunes instead of record shops, which is a bummer, but most labels that I pay attention to are still releasing CD’s and tapes and vinyl. There will always be people like me who love having something tangible and our bands have found it’s a lot easier to sell somebody a CD after a show than telling them “Don’t forget to look us up on Bandcamp tomorrow and pay for the digital download!”I saw your catalogues on your site, and I like the album artwork. Who makes it? You do it by yourself or you have friends to help? So far each one’s been different. Defne and The Undrummer did their art themselves. For all the other ones we’ve just asked friends of ours. We’re really lucky to know a lot of terrific artists, both in terms of music and in terms of visual art.By the way, do you also sell your physical releases in a record store? We’ve tried, but it’s really hard. There are two stores in Toronto that have taken a couple releases but they haven’t sold anything and there are no good record shops in my hometown of Oshawa. Most of our bands aren’t really famous yet so they have better success selling their music at their shows or through their Facebook. Talking about they who purchase your releases, where are they mostly come from? So far almost all of our sales have been from people at shows or friends and family. I've mailed a couple of things to England and the United States but we’re still getting started and just trying to get our name out there. It’s tough to reach new people in other countries when there’s so much music being created everywhere these days.I found ‘Dates’ on your site. What is it? You also have live event with your rosters perform there? Tell me about it. Yeah, because I was putting on shows for years before I started Fallen Love I've always liked running concerts. It gives me a chance to see my favorite bands for free and help them reach some new fans. This is the last question, what is your plan for this label in the future? We’re taking a bit of a quiet break for the spring while we work on some stuff in secret but hopefully we’ll have a bunch of things to announce by the time summer comes. I’m also taking a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia on the other side of Canada in March so I’m hoping to meet a bunch of new bands and people there. My long-term goal is for Fallen Love to become the number one indiepop label in Canada so we’re just going to keep working toward that one pop song at a time. Thanks for answering, Harley! All the best for you! Thanks, Zaldy!Go to their site to know more about their works or like their Facebook page to keep you updated.